40 entries categorized "Lifestyle"

21 February 2006

Forget the temporary spanish number I had published earlier on on this blog. I just got back a SIM card for my French mobile number. It feels really weird to running around town with no easy for people to reach you, and no easy way to call anyone.

In the meantime, the thief in Spain has given me a nice over 150 euros bill for a single day. Indeed he was using my French hence using roaming tarifs in Spain. Let’s hope my operator, Coriolis Telecom, will cancel that bill, as there IS NO WAY to call their 0800 numbers from abroad. I tried many times. I was just given today their international number for abroad, but it was nowhere to be found on their site. So I had to try to find a friend in France who would call in for me (thanks Lim!). Crazy customer experience.

In addition their call center hours are just ridiculous…offices / call center closes around 5pm.

Last week, when I called them in Paris, I was told I should have gone to the Spanish police offices and reported my phone loss. Right… who’s going to go to a foreign police office in a foreign language to report a stolen phone ? And then I would have to pay for an official translator to get the document in French, and *maybe* get something done with that document ?

Oh, and they also got my keys, so I have no keys to my house. Luckily I have wifi at home, so I used it for about 45 minutes sitting at my doorstep last night, until my wife came home… I’m having a copy done at some point today. I think I have a key loss/theft insurance with one of my credit cards. I’ll let you know in an update the funny stuff my bank will tell me when I try to use the insurance: I’m sure they’ll ask for an official document with the diameter of the earth in picometers or something….

19 February 2006

At Palau Muxio, an amazing 17th century palace in the Barri Gotic, where Real NetworksReal Networks was hosting its party. Some of us decided it was time by midnight to have some real fun after 3 hard days of work…

16 January 2006

Back from Las Vegas, I was wondering whether I should put up the footage of the keynotes I filmed. They were public performances, in front of tons of journalists, photographers, and cameras. Now that I spotted that videos of keynotes were up on cnet’s news.com, I guess there’s no reason not to publish my own footage (I'll take it down of coruse if I'm given a good reason to do so).

Why don’t we try something ? We should all try to film a little bit of the dinner/night. You can then email them to me and I’ll do a short movie from celebrations around the world ! What do you think ?

15 December 2005

Congrats to my friends Francis Lelong, Yoann Le Berrigaud and Franck Zayan at Sarenza.com, the new French online shoes distributor for closing a 2m euros round with Galileo partners. The information had been around in private circles for quite some time now, and was – it seems – the talk of the recent IVCS show in the south of France. The JdN has an article here.

The team used to be colleagues of mine at glowria and I had blogged their farewell party 11 months ago here. There’s a video interview of one of the co-founders here, taped last september. And congrats to the new happy VC: Régis Saleur. He told me the other day at Les Blogs 2.0 what an extraordinary deal it was . Congrats too to Christophe Chausson, the private placement specialist who helped them get funded.

So just for your pleasure, here it is again, taped only a few days after the team started fund-raising.

13 December 2005

It was my 10th concert of Cecilia Bartoli in about 12–13 years. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that she’s my absolute favourite artist ever. Last time I heard (I missed her last 2 concerts in Paris - stupid of me) was in Philadelphia in 2002, and a week later at Carnegie Hall in New York City. I was not going to let this occasion slip by. Yuck! It was totally sold out in September already. I had to use all my creativity to find 2 seats that I had to pay more than the most expensive seat. So worth it, trust me.

I am of course not the only fan… Laetitia Casta was sitting 2 rows in front of me (what a natural grace!), Carole Bouquet to the right (she’s perfect still, incredible), former ministers Roland Dumas and Alain Madelin, not too far, etc. And of course the theater was totally packed and sold out, with at least a dozen people outside looking for tickets.

You can tell the diva has matured and evolved. When she was in her mid-twenties, Cecilia had a natural gift and a fantastic technique: she sang the usual arias of Mozart and Rossini with the characteristic tremolos of her mezzo-soprano voice. Her ‘La ci darem la mano’ is one of my favourite interpretations. Her ‘Giusto Ciel’ is magnificent. Now add her new beautiful baroque repertoire singing Haendel & Haydn. I have to say that if I once thought these were boring composers, I retract. She’s even released new baroque DVDs with Harnoncourt.

Cecilia on Sunday in Paris performed extraordinarily. The concert was beautiful. On the “people” side, you must note that the lady has slimmed down quite a bit, sporting aggresively a tight black dress, and still has her long hear. And some jeweler lent her a enormous diamond necklace (I couldn’t count all the sparkles).

Her passion and energy is intact. I wrote once that when she laughs, you want to laugh, and when she cries you want to cry. Her onstage performance has always been outstanding, and still is. Or even better. After 2 or 3 arias, we needed a few moments to recover from the emotion (were it not for my neighbour shouting “brava!” immediately !). To paraphrase what was once said about Mozart: “the silence after Bartoli is still Bartoli”.

I recorded only extracts of the audience clapping to her (no way you can loose focus and tape the performance). I’ve been to the Opera many times. This was my first time ever of a full standing ovation.

From all the Divas I’ve heard live, and believe me, over 20 of them including Barbara Hendricks, Anne-Sofie von Otter, Jessye Norman, Renee Fleming, etc.; she’s the absolute best, and she’s not yet 40. The only probable runner up for me is Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (outstanding!).

12 December 2005

between December 24th and December 31st, I’ll be in Monaco with the family. If you’re anywhere in the French or Italian Riviera between Cannes & Savona, there’s a good chance we might have a drink together !

between January 4th and 8th, I’ll be in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. Our schedule there is pretty tight, but I’m sure we can grab drinks or a bite somewhere in the evening. I’ll be staying at the Flamingo hotel. And since I’m turning 35 on January 9th, Jean-Michel is promising me to take me to see Céline Dion as a birthday present ! And Jean-Michel wants to then go to San Francisco to the Macworld expo. I’ll pass this time... but will watch Jobs’ keynote online back home. Unless… (any sponsors out there who want to help me go cover that ?)

and between 13–16 of February (yuck! in the middle of St-Valentine), I’ll be in Barcelona, for the 3GSM World Congress.

04 December 2005

There’s a great deal currently available in France: you can get the complete works of Mozart in a single box: 170 CDs! It made a perfect present for my wife’s birthday the other day. The bad thing is that she can’t listen to it in our car (no CD player), or in the office. So a MP3 player seemed the right solution. So would be another iPod in the house, or an MP3 player for someone else ?

Santa Claus came in early again this year, and brought us this week the latest MP3 player from Sony, the NW-A1000. Cool design: I haven’t had time to install it yet, nor play with it, but it hit a perfect score with Madame, who liked the design a lot.

So people, wish me luck with the encoding of 170 CDs in MP3… it’s gonna take ages . There’s also a dedicated blog for the device and official pages at Sony.

There are also a number of nice videos about this device floating around on the Internet: